Author: C. E. Murphy
Category: Vampires
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Her head, which is small and being tossed like a balloon, moves farther away with each moment, and will take a long time indeed to find.
Emma, who is not human, and who therefore heard my screams, comes to me. She is fast, as fast as her father, but there is no room to run here, and so she could not be at my side in an instant. I cannot yet move: my limbs are still heavy, my heartbeat sluggish. I think perhaps the muscle there has been pierced, and am unsure how long it will take to heal. I am no easier to kill than any other witch, but no living thing can be pierced through and through and survive it comfortably. More, much of my magic has been stolen away, sucked up by the rival I should have anticipated. It, too, will recover, but it, too, needs time.
Now Jana is here, and although still human in form, she has strength her slighter sister lacks. Together they lift me to my feet, and in the darkness I can see Emma’s pupils are huge, her nostrils flared at the scent of blood. I am safe: I am always safe with my daughters, but it is another reminder of the things they are.
Jana is puffing smoke with outrage, and the earth rattles with the weight of her footfalls. All my strength turns to reinforcing the charm to make mortals look away. Jana knows the feel of that bit of magic and wastes no time in transforming. Air pops outward, displaced by the change in her mass.
Although I cannot see him, I know that half a mile away, Janx stiffens, every inch of his skin alert. But he also cannot see us, and so his tension is no concern of mine. Jana extends a crimson and black leg. Emma leads me up, tucking me against Jana’s ruff before snugging herself behind me, small and fierce and caring. Jana crouches and leaps upward, a powerful surge of muscle, and we’re in the sky, climbing higher, higher, higher still. There is wind in my hair, Jana’s ruff in my eyes, tears in my eyes as the air grows cooler. I have ridden on my daughter’s back for decades, and each time it is a new wonder, a gift to break my heart. It is her strength which has taken me across oceans I could not otherwise cross, and that is a secret my mother would kill for: mortal means are not enough to let a witch cross oceans. It takes magic, and of the winged Old Races, only dragons have the range. Baba Yaga might leave her frozen homeland on Rumi’s back, should she think of it, but in all the long cold centuries, she has not. Witches, too, are creatures of habit, and I would do nothing to put the idea in her mind even if I was still in her thrall.
I look back once, taking in the mass of people with a glance. I imagine that I can see him there, red hair falling long as he stares into the night sky, his gaze fixed on Jana’s retreating form. His heart will be in his throat, his whole being wishing to fling himself into the air after us. But he will not. Long history and good sense will keep him on the ground, and so my daughter remains safe.
She remains safe, and I have survived, so I have only the smallest room to harbor regret in my heart. I would have said a farewell, had I any choice in the matter. But for the second time, I have not, and if it happens once more then I will know the red dragon and the witch’s daughter are meant never to say goodbye.
There is a certain bittersweet relief in that. I am bleeding, drained, regretful, but comforted too, and so I look forward again, to the future—for that, after all, is where hope lies.
The Knight’s Tale
Supersaturated sunlight made Rebecca shade her eyes as she exited the subway. Construction was going on, strong men in sleeveless shirts and hardhats climbing scaffolding with the confidence of monkeys. Long-haired women in bell bottoms and sandals slowed to admire them. Businessmen stepped swiftly to avoid running the women down. The colors would never fade in Rebecca’s mind: brilliant blue sky punctured by glass-clad buildings, white and grey walls a backdrop for passers-by in orange and green and brown.
She wore brown herself, muted and tasteful, with a scarf tied at her throat. Businesswear, meant to oblige others to take her seriously. And across the street, half a block down, was Eliseo Daisani, one of the men she was meeting. Rumors flew through her office—an investment firm—about how he’d made his money. The favored story was that he had profited wildly at Woodstock, and was bankrolling that into an ever-increasing fortune. He didn’t look like someone who would have even heard of a music festival, but then, Rebecca herself, in a business suit and her hair braided back, didn’t either. Daisani saw her, mistook her raised hand for a wave, and waved in return. A shadow went wrong above her head, making her flinch internally, savannah response to danger from above.
The impact knocked her from her feet. She should have fallen, but didn’t: a man was there, catching her, while a dozen steps away—in the very place she’d been standing a moment earlier—an iron girder smashed to the ground, shattering concrete and sending reverberations down the sidewalk. People screamed, scattered, all too late. Her heart hadn’t yet had time to react, still thumping at its usual calm pace.
She was in Eliseo Daisani’s arms, held in a bride’s carry by a man who had been a hundred yards away when disaster began to unfold.
He put her back on her feet, carefully. He was a small man, shorter than Rebecca at the best of times, and at the moment she wore platforms that increased her height advantage by two inches.
Really, the speed at which he’d snatched her should have knocked her out of her shoes. She glanced at them, re-discovering the straps that kept them on her feet. Thick leather, as was the fashion; thick enough to withstand the collision. Mystery solved. She raised her eyes again, looking down at Eliseo Daisani, who could not possibly, not rationally, have saved her life. Not from the distance he’d been at. Not on the long side of a New York City block. Logically, she must have misjudged the distance. He must have been closer, perhaps only across the street, not half a block down. Even then he had been impossibly fast.
He had not been closer, and she knew it. He had crossed a hundred yards faster than humanly possible, and she was alive because of it.
Finally, finally, Rebecca’s heartbeat accelerated. Finally , as if her feet didn’t still itch with the sidewalk’s vibrations, or as if screams weren’t still filling the air. No time at all had passed, not really, while she internally debated possibility and rationality and rejected them both in the face of what had happened.
Daisani, brown eyes bright with rue, lifted a finger to his lips: shh.
As if there was anything that could be said. Rebecca’s pulse thrummed at urgent speed beneath her jaw, but the ascot scarf hid that from prying eyes. She looked down the street once more, to where Daisani’s driver still held the car door open. A woman was just getting out: Vanessa Grey, Mr. Daisani’s assistant. Her face, even at the distance, was dangerous in its neutrality. She was not a woman Rebecca would like to cross, and there were very few people who brought that thought to Rebecca’s mind.
Rebecca looked at Eliseo Daisani, smiled briefly, and in a smooth and steady voice said, “Good morning, Eliseo. I believe they’re holding our table for us.”
His own smile was a much fuller thing, peeling back to expose admiration and amusement. “Good morning, Rebecca. I believe you’re right. May I be so bold?” He offered his arm, and Rebecca took it to be escorted beyond the shaken construction workers into the restaurant for lunch.
***
Rebecca Knight was easy to dislike. That was Vanessa’s assessment, and she had had over a century to perfect those rapid assessments in. Rebecca had the austerity of genuine beauty, that cool and remote reserve that made her difficult to know. She should have been a ballet dancer, not a business woman; she had the long limbs and swan-like neck, the slim body and large eyes that would be vaunted on stage. She also seemed to have a ballerina’s wiry strength, though that was conjecture on Vanessa’s part, having not yet had cause to test the other woman’s strength.
And she was, bluntly, looking for the excuse. Eliseo had been unbelievably foolish, darting through traffic to rescue a woman in broad daylight, when anyone might have noticed the inhuman speed at which he traveled. He never took chances like that, not in the hundred years Vanessa had known him. No
t for any woman he’d ever met in that time, except Vanessa.
That, of course, was most of the reason she found Knight unlikable. Jealousy was ridiculous after so long, but she’d very rarely been tested on that front. Of course there were women. There were always women, when it came to Eliseo Daisani and the dragonlord Janx. But all of those women had been before Vanessa’s time—or, if she had to admit it, when she was absent from Eliseo’s side. He had been unusually thoughtful a few years ago after returning from the upstate music festival. Vanessa had not asked, but it ate at her and no doubt added to her dislike of Rebecca Knight.
If only the woman had screamed, or backed away in horror, or given some sign of disbelieving the rescue she’d just undergone. But she hadn’t. Even half the block away, Vanessa had seen the swift resolution on Rebecca’s face. She had seen and understood perfectly .
And she had ignored it.
No one was that unshakable. No one, which was precisely why Eliseo was now pouring Rebecca an unnecessarily expensive glass of wine and smiling avariciously at her. He was a moth to flame, when the flame was someone extraordinary.
Vanessa had never fully understood why he had chosen her. It had become clearer the night Janx told the story of the Chicago fire. Eliseo had seen her that night, looking through the smoke at dragons in the sky. No one else had seen them, but even so, it seemed a thin rope to bind himself to her with.
“No,” Rebecca said, making it suddenly clear the expensive wine was going to waste. “The senior partners are eager to represent you, of course—”
“And you aren’t?” Eliseo asked, amused. “Reeling me in would make your career, Ms. Knight. Both of your careers,” he added with a nod toward Rebecca’s partner. Russell something; Vanessa had the name written in her appointment book.
“Of course I am,” Rebecca said coolly. “But the information you’re proposing to offer is tantamount to insider trading, and neither of us will profit from even a hint of corruption.”
Russell Lomax, that was it. His gaze slid sideways, sure indication of guilty interest. Unless Vanessa was mistaken, the young Mr. Lomax would shortly belong wholesale to Eliseo, and likely have an illustrious career because of it.
Rebecca Knight would likely have an illustrious career despite Eliseo Daisani, whose smile lit up again. “So certain of yourself, Ms. Knight. Perhaps we could discuss it further over dinner. Vanessa, will you arrange it?”
Vanessa smiled, took a note, and promised herself that if Rebecca gave one hint of telling anyone what she had seen, she would personally kill her.
***
There were women who would find Daisani’s assumption that Rebecca would, of course, like to discuss it over dinner, and his impetuous request to Ms. Grey to arrange it, to be manly, decisive and flattering. Charming, even.
To her irritation, Rebecca found it at least amusing, and that was close enough to charming that she had agreed. And was glad she had: it was not actually possible that Ms. Grey had managed reservations at the Four Seasons, where it took months of advance notice to get a table, on a few hours’ notice. Yet that was where Eliseo’s driver delivered her, and she entered with a murmured, “Two impossible things before dinner.”
“Four to go,” Daisani said from behind her, “and I have all night before breakfast.”
Rebecca startled, then turned with a laugh, her hand pressed to her chest. “I didn’t think anyone would hear me. You look…”
He was never going to be handsome, was Eliseo Daisani. He was too sallow, not tall enough, and plainly, if evenly, featured. But in a sharp suit—not quite a tuxedo—and a sharper smile, he was charismatic, and that was
perhaps more effective than handsomeness. His smile sharpened further, and he nodded. “Yes. So do you.”
“You should have warned me,” Rebecca said mildly. “I overdressed for anywhere in town but here.”
“I thought you would, so you hardly needed to be warned. Our table is this way.” He threaded his way to a window, one of the best seats in the house, and held her chair for her.
Rebecca stopped without sitting, taking in the view, then the restaurant, before looking at Eliseo. “You have a permanent table.”
“It makes things easier.” He waited for her to sit, then took his own seat, murmuring, “You said two impossible things,” as he did so.
“A table at the Four Seasons doesn’t qualify if you have a permanent one.”
“And the other?” His gaze was unnervingly intent.
The memory of the morning’s brightness lit Rebecca’s mind, playing out the scene for the hundredth time. Playing, most vividly, the touch of his finger to his lips: shh.
“That you asked me to dinner without Ms. Grey eviscerating me,” she said lightly. “I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Daisani tilted his head, bird-like, then was still for a few long moments before peculiar humor came into his smile. “Vanessa doesn’t like anyone I like, as a matter of course. She’s over-protective.”
Rebecca’s eyebrows shot up. “Of you ?”
“Of us. Ah, here’s the waiter. I saw your expression when I inveigled this dinner invitation, Ms. Knight. I think I’d better ask before making the same mistake twice: may I order for you?”
Of us. The brief phrase carried more weight than it should. Piqued more curiosity than it should, as well: it was none of Rebecca’s business what kind of us Eliseo Daisani and Vanessa Grey might be. “Do you think you know me well enough to order my dinner?”
“Oh,” Daisani said absently, “I can smell what you like. Chicken or pork rather than beef, but seafood is your first preference. Greens instead of starches, though you have a weakness for good soft bread and butter. And you like white wines more than reds regardless of what one is ‘supposed’ to drink with a particular meal.”
Rebecca’s jaw fell open and Eliseo Daisani laughed aloud. “I watched what you ate at lunch, Ms. Knight.”
Which did not preclude the unpleasant idea that he could smell what she liked. He could cross a hundred yards inside a breath; the idea of another superpower was far from inconceivable. Rebecca closed her mouth with a soft pop, then touched her lips with a linen napkin. “I believe I can trust you to order my dinner.”
***
She didn’t ask. Didn’t comment, all the way through dinner and into the idle walk through city streets after. Didn’t ask, and it drove Eliseo mad. A wonderful kind of madness, one that set his heart racing and kept laughter on his lips. That was so much more Janx than himself, but the modern world was cruel. He and Janx were obliged by an increasingly media-driven world and the curious, idle masses to restrain themselves from too much communication, and so he, Eliseo Daisani, was also obliged to take on the role of curious flirt if he wanted that in his life.
Rebecca Knight, by all appearances, had no interest in such a flirt. He thought he amused her, which was not the usual reaction women had. Fear or fascination, but not amusement. Not careful disregard for the impossible thing she’d seen. That was not how women behaved.
He wanted to confess all so badly he could taste it. Could taste it like blood in his mouth, sweet and tempting. It had been centuries since the impulse to disclose all had been so strong, and the world had been a very different place then. More important, the woman in whom he’d then wished to confide had been drawn to him—and to Janx—in a way that Rebecca was not.
Either that, he thought, or she was the finest actress he’d ever met. “That information I offered this afternoon, Ms. Knight…”
Her heart jumped, which was something, at least. She wasn’t entirely immune to curiosity. But her voice was as crisp and cool as it had been throughout the business day and into dinner. “I’m not interested, Mr. Daisani. Russell shouldn’t be either. There would be consequences.”
Daisani, lightly, murmured, “There’s a double meaning to that,” and Rebecca gave him a sharp look.
“Against my will, I bid thee come to dinner? No, Mr. Daisani, there’s no dou
ble meaning. It’s a very generous, very foolish, and borderline illegal offer. A federal circuit court has already ruled it is illegal, not just unethical. Russell may be foolish enough to trade on your potential upcoming partnership and investments with Global Brokerage Incorporated, but I’ll have no part in it.”
Eliseo’s eyebrows shot up as she spoke. “You’re extraordinary, Rebecca.”
She looked exasperated, not pleased. “Am I.”
“I can hardly choose where to begin. You recognize a not-oft-quoted line of Shakespeare. You lay out the situation as you see it with no sugar coating. Most people would have tip-toed around the details you just expounded on.” She had not, though, quite been telling the truth. Her heartbeat, rushing too fast again, told him that much. There was a double meaning to it: there was the topic at hand, the question of whether she and Russell would succumb to the temptation he’d offered. But beneath that there was the matter of the rescue, and she laid that out too, with those same words. I’m not interested. There would be consequences.
Oh, she was right. So very right, but humans never believed that, not even when they were told from the start that they wouldn’t walk away unscathed. But Rebecca Knight understood, and it made her delectable. Daisani’s fingers curled toward his palms, aching with the desire to grasp her and hold on.
Rebecca gave him a level look. “Mr. Daisani, there are a vanishingly small number of women in stockbroking as it is. I may be the only black woman working in the industry in this city. Yes. You’re right. I’m extraordinary. I am also scrutinized, and even if it was my nature to gamble on someone like you, I would refrain in order to keep my career. There is nothing with which you could tempt me.”